A night at the Mangroves in Pasir Ris Park, Singapore

Having a break from my travels, I finally found the time to go to the Mangrove boardwalk in Pasir Ris Park. 10pm to around 1 am is a pretty good time to go as the tide is coming in, bringing some interesting things along…whilst we were looking for snakes primarily, it was a surprisingly fruitful evening for other fauna….

The moon shone brightly over the mangroves

The most common snake in the area is the dog faced watersnake

yellow underside..

The dog-faced watersnake: but it’s face really doesn’t look like a dog!

The night was getting a bit quiet with nothing much stirring when J spotted this beauty, roosting in the low branches just a few feet up from the mangrove floor…it was a sleeping Tailor Bird! Birders will know that the Tailor bird is a very active bird flitting around the bushes and very difficult to get nice pictures of…

I had expected him to wake up and fly off when I started shooting him with my macro camera and flash up close…but he just opened his eyes….

and closed them again…he seemed totally undisturbed by my presence just about a foot away…

This was so unusual…to shoot a bird who was so cooperative…and with a macro lens at that! This was such a special moment…

and just next to the tailor bird, I saw some legs wrapped around another tree trunk…

A tree climbing crab with blue stalked eyes!

beautifully purple coloured claws

This was the murky water from which the mangrove roots poke out..

and there was a very active horsehoe crab moving around just next to the tailor bird and crab

and then a sad sight…this poor eel had been stranded as the tide went out much earlier and had perished

And then J found this tiny little snake…the crab eating water snake, the second of 4 species of water snake found in Pasir Ris Park.

He was a friendly fellow…note the white forked tongue

Not very colourful…brownish black I guess…

And the final highlight of the night…the largest praying mantises I’ve ever seen before….here the male..

And here, the female

Close up, we can see that the right antenna is broken and we can also see where the Alien movies got their inspiration from!

Sometimes, it’s nice to see what my local nature parks have…surprising Singapore indeed!